Here’s Why Uber Drivers Around The World Are Going On Strike Today

No company better sums up the perils of the casual gig economy than Uber.

When the ride-sharing service first went live, it was heralded as the future of work — shifts could be flexibly fit in around other jobs, and drivers, so the story went, were empowered to take their hours into their own hands. After all, drivers can clock onto Uber whenever they want for as long as they want, and it’s no longer necessary for employees to struggle to fit set shifts around each other.

If you catch a ride through Uber or Lyft on May 8, you're crossing a picket a line. #uberstrike #lyftstrike #1uhttps://t.co/DUjut75eGz

— Working America (@WorkingAmerica) April 30, 2019

But these minor upsides are no match for the app’s considerable problems. Uber does not consider its drivers to be employees, and so provides them with no insurance, or sick and holiday pay. In this way, and with little public outcry, the company has managed to totally circumnavigate all of the rights that the labour movement has fought hard for decades to secure.

Drivers who are hurt, who suffer family tragedies, or simply reach retirement age, have no security net. They are vulnerable, deeply at risk of exploitation and having their earning power rapidly and irreversibly cut.

For this reason, Uber drivers around the globe are taking matters into their own hands. Ahead of Uber’s initial public offering this Friday — a presentation at which Uber is set to sell off stock worth billions of dollars to the public — drivers are staging a mass boycott of the app. Across American cities, drivers will refuse to take jobs through the app from 7AM to 9AM, although some are set to switch off for the entire day. It’s also a strike being supported here, with many drivers electing not to pick up passengers around Australia.

I won't take any @Lyft or @Uber this week, I'm in solidarity with the drivers' Wednesday Strike. Uber cutting drivers pay by 25%, yet Uber launching IPO. #uberstrike #lyftstrike https://t.co/uWT0mBlLHR

— Johnathan Soul (@johnathansoul) May 6, 2019

The drivers’ demands are simple — as Vox reports, they are calling for a better rate of pay, to be let into the process that the app uses to calculate fares, to be granted both health and disability insurance, and to have an important stake in how the company shapes and redevelops its future.

All of these are normal rights that workers in many other fields have access to. It is only Uber, the so-called future of employment, that has managed to bypass them.

Uber, for its part, provided Vox with an infuriatingly roundabout statement. “Drivers are at the heart of our service — we can’t succeed without them — and thousands of people come into work at Uber every day focused on how to make their experience better, on and off the road,” it reads.

To support the strike, riders are being encouraged to stay off the app for the rest of the day.